Lampwork – newbie week 4

March 17 – 21

I think I’m going to start using bigger image thumbnails. Because I can!

Week 4 colour testing

This week’s colour tests. Light blue, dark blue, baby blue, mid blue, dark sky blue opaque, light sky blue opaque, lapis cobalt blue, turquoise, “mango coral” (more on this later), anise white, and two spacers made of Vetrofond Odd Light Red Jasper. The darker one was first on the mandrel and was reheated while I made the second.

I did the blues because I had a whole pile of single rods in slightly differing shades. I do like the baby blue, it’s obviously different. I’m not sure which of the other ones I prefer, but I probably only need one of them!

I discovered in my blue tests that the rod I’d been using that I thought was turquoise was in fact light sky blue. It doesn’t make a huge amount of difference – they both react the same – but I think I prefer the actual turquoise for general purposes. (When I’ve mentioned turquoise stringer, it *was* turquoise. This had me confused for a bit). Dark sky blue and dark turquoise are fairly indistinguishable.

Week 4 beads

Back row, right to left:
1. Slightly raised dots. Yellow ochre base with layered dark red brown dots.
2-3. Dragonscale attempt. Dark ivory base, dots of silver leaf on ivory stringer (extra-silvered SIS), petrol green dots on top, slightly gravity swirled as melting in. Not quite the neat effect you can get, but I think I missed out a step…
4. Floral/eye. Base bead is opaque purple encased in transparent mid purple and is a lovely deep grape colour. I then made 4 big dots in various different base colours (black, white, cobalt, light pink) and practised some encased florals/eyes on them.
5. Green eye mk 2. This is pretty much what last week’s eye looked like before encasing, but a bit neater. Again, lime green base, encased in grass green, eye and decoration on top.

Front:
1-2. Implosions. The lapis cobalt blue one was my first and didn’t implode very far… The second is very orange – it’s opaque light red and I’d tried putting a row of mid purple and then grass green dots on the outer parts of my disk, but I keep forgetting how light transparents get in small amounts! The green has slightly tinted the bottom and the purple is invisible. But it came out much better than the first! I’m still working on getting the ends tidy after doing the imploding.
3. Smiley. Dark yellow base, black and ivory for eyes. Got a bit smudgy but I kinda like it.
4. Purple twistie bead. The twistie is one I made a while back with light pink, purple, and transparent mid purple. I wound some on for the core, encased in clear and did a wavy line in more twistie round the centre. The shape hasn’t photographed very clearly! It’s nice to hold.
5. Light sky blue and coral. I used a spoon to mash it into shape and added stringer decoration in coral and black, adding dots of baby blue in places. They change the look quite a bit and it’s rather weird!